Obama fails to curb surveillance state with new proposal

Last week, the President held a Press Conference to present his plan to curb his surveillance state policies. Actually, that may be giving him too much credit. The President stated that his goal was to put our mind at ease. But not by ramping down the collection of our transcommunication data, rather it was to pile more secrets on top of secrets. Thus, he offered no plan to slow, restrict or kill the surveillance bureaucracies in America, but instead sought to add additional levels of secret oversight.

Nothing the President recommended came anything close to stopping the unconstitutional searches and seizures taking place everyday with regards to Americans phone or internet information, but instead focused on greater transparency.

“Bizarrely, [the President] compared the need for transparency to showing his wife that he had done the dishes, rather than just telling her he had done so. Out-of-control surveillance is a bit more serious than kitchen chores. It is the existence of these programs that is the problem, not whether they are modestly transparent. As long as the N.S.A. believes it has the right to collect records of every phone call [] then none of the promises to stay within the law will mean a thing.”

Let’s face it, the President is a neo-con on surveillance. He doesn’t seem to have run into a surveillance program that he didn’t like so far. The President refuses to even talk in language that could suggest closing down the program. Sadly, John Boehner’s office released a statement effectively encouraging these intrusive programs. In fact, many republicans, including my own Congressmen support the illegal surveillance of their constitutents.

This issue will not remain on the front pages of our newspapers for much longer, yet it is shaping up to be the one of the issues of our time. Today, repulocrats and demuplicans may deny the need for protecting our birthright, our freedoms. But if the American people demand enough changes that go unanswered, one of the parties will eventually give in and champion a muscular Fourth Amendment and Bill of Rights.

We don’t need more secret accountability on unconstitutional programs. This actually has been a complete failure with regards to secret FISA judges issuing warrants that are neither detached or narrow.

Mr. Obama: End these programs. Kill programs like Project XKeyscore, require the Justice Department to stop seeking warrants on millions of phone records. Stop the federal government from taking metadata straight off of private company servers. This government is by us and for us, not over us.